


These Lessons Learned in Time

by Saerus2665



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alpha Keith (Voltron), Alpha Shiro (Voltron), Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Back during the old glory days, Beta Hunk (Voltron), Drabble, Hurt/Comfort, I wrote this before we knew anything about anything, M/M, Omega Lance (Voltron), Pack Dynamics, Team as Family, just guys being pals and pals being family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 02:30:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18306371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saerus2665/pseuds/Saerus2665
Summary: Keith goes through life not really sure of who he’s supposed to be. There are people along the way that help him figure it out.A quick drabble on early-Keith and the slow process of the team becoming a a pack. Takes place in the early days of Voltron.





	These Lessons Learned in Time

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of this was written before we knew about Keith's backstory so there are some inconsistencies. I really just wanted to write a fic with team as a pack from Keith's perspective and kind of play around with their roles and dynamics in different situations. Please don't take any of this too seriously. Hope you enjoy.

Keith presented when he was fourteen.

His foster mom at the time had looked at him with sad eyes and graying hair. Her face was pinched but she had always been kind to Keith, and she was still, even when she said “Such a shame, you would have made such a nice omega” 

Two weeks later and Keith found himself back at the the foster center. At the time he didn’t think the two events were related. As the years passed, he began to realize they were.

The home he gets placed in is primarily for alphas. It’s messy, loud and rowdy and he’s always bumping elbows with someone else. The couple in charge- one beta and one omega- are both uncaring people. They aren’t neglectful, per se, but the beta can’t even hope to control such a massive amount of alpha boys under his roof and the omega is obviously just emotionally exhausted. Some of the older kids say she was nicer when they’d first gotten there, but it’s taxing trying to abate aggression in such a large group of people. So much so that the omega easily comes to top the list of the strictest, meanest women Keith had ever met in his life. But they take Keith and the other boys in because there’s a higher stipend if your willing to foster alphas and the systems particularly biased towards homes with an omega as one of two parents.

The time there passes in a blur of too many growls, too many fights. Keith feels like he’s always flinching away from another pair of bared teeth. He gets thrown into a dishwasher one day so hard that the appliance crumpled beneath his body and he needs stitches. He has to wait to until his beta foster father gets home from to take him.

The drive to the hospital is the only time he’d ever had alone with one of his foster parents. Most of the trip is spent in the same uncomfortable, tired silence that seemed to always permeate the air around his foster father. But then they stop at a stoplight and the beta’s grip flexes on the wheel and he draws in a tired breath. “You know, you’re a lot softer than all the other boys. That’s why they tear you apart” And he does not say it unkindly, there’s more sadness there than anything and it makes Keith wish he’d known the beta before he’d started fostering hoards of alpha boys.

“If you acted more alpha,” his foster father continues and switches on his blinker half a second before making the turn into the hospital lot, “they wouldn’t pick on you as bad.” 

Maybe he thinks it was good advice. Maybe he’s trying to save Keith’s skin.

It’s probably then that Keith learns for the first time about humanities predisposition to destroy all things soft in the universe. 

Keith thinks about the minefield of grit teeth, low growls, back of the throat frustration and rage- so much rage- all back at home. He focuses on that, swallowing hard over the speed bumps in the parking lot. That must be what alphas are. 

The nurse he meets at the hospital smiles kindly and gives him candy treats once she’s done and he thanks her so warmly and honestly for her kindness afterwards that she beams and even hands him another piece. 

But the look on his foster fathers face afterwards has the same moroseness that he saw in his former foster mother before he was sent away, and Keith knows he’s done it wrong again. 

Keith makes it four more years at that home before he accepts an offer from a dark haired alpha to join a mission greater than he is. 

The time at the garrison was…different. It was spent in a haze, a haze of trying to fit in where he could. Trying to fill in the holes in his austere with all the lessons he’d been taught in life, and trying to hide the blanks left by those he had not. It sort of all feels like a game of disguise. How long before they realize you aren’t what you say? How long before they realize you don’t know what to be? 

It comes to him posturing at Shiro over something dumb. It was dumb. And Shiro was an alpha, a much- much larger alpha, who could probably have Keith on the ground in the blink of an eye. But he doesn't react to it in a way that Keith anticipated. He expected nails and teeth and a little bit of growling but not much because Shiro couldn’t possibly see him as a threat. Instead, Shiro looks at him, expression surprised before then he sits back down in his seat across from him at the metal table in the garrison library, contemplating. 

Keith stares at him, bewildered, still tensed and waiting for Shiro’s alpha side. But it doesn’t come. 

After a moment Shiro says, “You don’t have to be like that Keith.” His voice is careful, low and understanding, but it still makes Keith’s face feel hot and his stomach drop. It doesn’t make any sense because Shiro should know he could send Keith running with his tail between his legs with one well placed alpha command. Maybe Keith wants him to. Maybe he wants to see Takashi Shirogane actually act like the alpha he always tried himself to be. But Shiro doesn’t, he won’t. 

“You don’t have to use anger instead of being vulnerable” he says instead.

Keith blinks. Once, twice, and then again. He’s not sure what was going to come next. There’s a knife on the table between the two of them. A knife that Keith had dropped and that Shiro was returning. 

“It’s okay to say how you really feel,” Shiro finishes. He doesn’t take his eyes off Keith.

Shiro waits while Keith processes his words, and watches his expression to crumble to something infinitely more raw, more vulnerable. Keith retakes his seat swallowing guiltfully, but he’s ready to learn exactly what Shiro has to teach.

It’s all for not because one year later a Kerberos update beeps to his phone. Keith only makes it three more months at the garrison, trying for Shiro. It all comes to an end one day because Keith has never in his life put more power behind a right hook than the one he throws into Iverson face.

There’s an unpresented cadet at the door Keith tries to run out of. He forgets that all doors to the garrison lock at night. The boy short with wide eyes and wire rimmed glasses and he’s just as startled to see Keith running down the hall with blood on his knuckles as Keith is to remember that there are other people at the garrison.

The shorter boy evaluates him and for a second Keith thinks he’s gonna say something about the enraged commander shouting and storming down the adjacent hall.

Instead, they boy asks; “Your Shiro’s brother, right?” 

“Yeah,” Keith says. He doesn’t bother correcting him. From the blender his brain’s been thrown into ever since Kerberos, Keith remembers that this boy has shown to be pretty good with tech in their classes.

“Look I-uh I need to leave and I need to get through this door.” He makes himself look the other boy in the eye. “Can you help me?”

There’s a short moment and then something strange in his voice when the kid finally answers. “Yeah.”

The door slides open only a few short moments later and Keith slips out into the night. As he runs, he hopes that the boy gets out of there before Iverson or Sanda can find him.

It’s only the second time in his life that he’s wished someone else besides him to be okay. 

There’s Shiro again, there’s a lion, all coming after living in a desert for so long and having the near constant thought: “At least I’m an alpha or else the isolation would really suck”. The shack isn’t something he misses, except for its nostalgia. It served its purpose, a shelter from the heat and the sand, and if Keith found himself more often than not speaking to the lizards he found on his porch at night, then it was only because they were in dire need of intelligent conversation.

They become paladins of Voltron. And they do not get along.

It’s not like...it’s not like they have reason to not get along. By all rights they make up a pack. Pidge - the boy that night that helped him escape- is unpresented. Hunk’s one of the most evaluating betas he’s ever seen. Lance practically burns with the energy of an omega. And then there’s Shiro- their leader.

They don’t need a second alpha but they have one, and sometimes Keith feels stuck on, like an afterthought, an accidental carbon copy. 

They don’t get along.

Pidge is obviously hiding something and they’re vicious whenever they so much as suspect someone hedging around it. 

Hunk is a mess of anxiety and nervous energy. 

Keith’s anxious too, anxious to lose Shiro again, that he may disappear in the vastness of space and Keith has no idea how he’ll get him back a second time out here. 

Lance is exuberant and obnoxiously so. He just says what he wants, when he wants, inserts himself and his jokes into every conversation to the point where it seems Keith can’t just sit down and think without Lance showing up and trying to make a fool of himself. No ones dying to hear Lance’s thoughts on most thing, and it’s not like Lance can’t be serious, Keith’s seen him be serious. He’s watched Lance carefully from across the room as he acts in response to something about Shiro and the Galra or Pidge’s family or Hunk’s anxiety. Keith’s seen Lance look serious, like he wants to do something to help them, like he’s seconds away from reaching out and saying something genuinely helpful, but then he always fishtails into some ridiculous joke or antagonistic gesture that has everyone rolling their eyes and Keith snapping back him. 

Out of all of them, its Lance that gets to Keith the most. Their teams fracturing, splitting down the middle at the presence of the Galra and the pressure of keeping everything together. And Lance wont take anything seriously long enough to actually do his part in keeping them together. Keith had always thought omegas were supposed to be more emotionally sensitive, kinder and warmer; they were supposed to be homebodies, more reticent and ready to do whatever to make their pack around them content. Granted, Keith hadn’t had much experience with Omegas, but still, Lance was opposite of everything he’d ever known. He was loud, crude and obnoxious. He didn’t have a bone in his body that comprehends anything beyond a joke. 

Lance jumps in front of an explosion to save Coran’s life, and Keith thinks then that maybe he's wrong.

Lance comes back to consciousness by sheer drive to keep their team safe, growling low in his throat even after Sendak is down for the count, and Keith thinks maybe he was wrong. 

Pidge confesses to them all eventually. The setting they do it in feels too private for Keith, like he’s intruding on something he’s not meant to be apart of. But afterward there’s a slacking in the tension held up between the paladins, something gentler and fonder taking place in the air. 

Slowly, they’re learning how to be a pack. 

The castle goes haywire and tries to kill them all, and in hindsight, it’s probably that new pack bond that leads him, despite being chased by a killer bot, to where Lance is trapped in an ventilation shaft, only seconds away from being vacuumed into space.

It’s also probably the new pack bond that lets Keith know that Lance is very, very nervous for a long time after that, and it fuels an impulse in Keith to hover near his side for the next few hours afterwards.

Lance gets closer to Pidge, forming a sibling rivalry that’s mostly based in teasing and taunts, but then he starts ushering them to bed when he needs to. Keith sometimes finds the two of them sitting up later at night when she just wants to push a little bit more on an idea. 

Lance gets closer to Hunk, though the two had always been close. Whenever the nervous line of Hunks shoulders comes up, or the anxious rubbing of his fingers and hands, Lance will suddenly appear with a cheery joke to take his mind. Lance is also a huge hugger, at least when it comes to Hunk. There’s countless mornings when Keith will come into the kitchen after training to find Hunk fixing breakfast while a half asleep Lance hangs off him from behind, arms wrapped loosely around his neck.

Lance is very awkward around Shiro. Keith can mostly tell because Lance always looks like he’s on the verge of saying something to Shiro during when he’s the most stressed out, but then always turns to Keith for what to do instead. 

Lance and Keith still don't get along, and there’s no indication as to why. Lance is still boisterous, teasing and exuberant towards everyone, but he’s never gentler in the ways Keith’s seen him be with the others towards him. Not that Keith is overly jealous of it, but it does drive him that little pin that maybe Keith’s not supposed to be here when the only omega refuses to do anything more than fight with him. 

Its like that for a while between them and then things comes to a head then when Keith gets taken. Moreso, Keith gets snatched. 

Their camping out on a new planet on a mission and Lance convinces them all to sleep outside in the little tents store in their lions, saying it’d be “like a camp out”. The view of the night sky, admittedly, had been breathtaking. There was a sort of creepy cave at the bottom of the hill that they probably should have been paid more attention to because halfway through the night Keith wakes up to the feeling of something cool wrapping around his ankle. He barely has time to register it before he’s yanked straight out of his tent.

To their credit, the team reacts almost instantly. They shout his name as they all scramble up and out of their tents but they quickly get caught up fighting of their own. Lance is the only one that dodged through the mass makes it to Keith right he’s dragged into the deepest darkest parts of the cave. Lance makes a spectacular headshot with only one hand because the other is clutching onto Keith so hard Keith’s hand goes numb. Lance kills the beast but the resounding cries and thrashing it causes makes cave collapse around them. 

The two of them get trapped in a small cavern lit only by bioluminescent algae floating in a small pool in the corner. Keith also breaks his leg. 

To his credit, Lance tries to be as good of a trapped-in-a-cave partner as he can be, but it doesn’t matter how quite he keeps after Keith snaps at him for panicking over his leg because his scent still goes crazy. Lance must be aware of it because he tries to curl up as far away from Keith as he can, but the space in the cavern is small and his scent is so riddled with hopelessness, stress, and anxiety that its wreaking havoc on Keith’s instincts. The double combo of the pain in his leg and his alpha instincts clouding his mind leave Keith feeling so disjointed and out of control. He wakes from his half-attempt at sleep propped against the wall and just hisses, “Lance.” 

The omega curls tighter into himself and mutters something like an apology. Keith finally has to resign himself to the fact that their situation was only going to get worse if he doesn’t do something. The pressure from his instincts are telling him to take action something but he’s never really interacted with an Omega’s outside of Lance before and Lance has always been perfectly fine on his own. Keith doesn’t know what to do. He ends up just asking. “What can I do to help?” Trying to force his voice to not come off as harsh.

And Lance, who Keith has pegged as boisterous and loud but possibly better at being an omega than he lets on proves that last point right again when as he licks his lips, winces, and says; “Let me help you.”

And Keith already said he won’t let Lance near his leg since splintering shins isn’t exactly in the paladin first-aid training, but he does agree to let Lance touch him. Lance scoots back up to Keith’s side and Keith watches apprehensively as Lance hesitantly reaches out. He’s never been comforted by an omega before, he doesn’t even know if it’s going to work. 

Keith loses his breath at the first touch of those fingertips. Lance’s soft fingers glide through Keith’s hair, pushing the dusty locks away from his face and back behind his ears. Then he does it again. His fingers occasionally stroke across the tip of his ears, down the line of his jaw. Keith eyes flutter shut as he melts into it and Lance quietly hums in the back of his throat. They’re so close that their breathing is all Keith can hear. 

Lance’s scent also changes. From something that pulls at Keith’s instincts to something so warm and honey sweet that it feels like he’s drowning in it. The tension leaks out of his body with each new breath he breathes of it.

Keith’s startles when those fingertips first brush against his scent glands, his breathing catching. 

“Sorry,” Lance mumbles immediately, pulling back.

Keith reaches out and catches him before he can fully pull away. “No, wait,” he says way too quick,“I just...go slow?”

Lance looks unsure for a second, an odd look on him, but he nods and then does. He starts again with petting his hands through Keith’s hair, only occasionally touching his scent glands with soft glances and brushes of his finger. He slowly builds into lightly kneading at them with his thumbs as he massages at the base of Keith neck. Keith doesn’t even realize he’s slowly tipping forward, until the forehead brushes against Lance’s collarbone, the skin there almost hot to the touch. Lance shifts himself so he can bear more of Keith’s weight and then gently guides him to rest his head in the crook of his shoulder. Keith can’t help that way his lips part just enough to pull in a lungful of that sweet dewey omega scent Lance is putting off in waves. 

Through the fog in his head, Keith recognizes a rumbling sound echoing throughout the cavern, louder than Lance’s own. Lance huffs a laugh. Keith realizes after a second that’s it’s him. He’s rumbling under the attention of Lance’s omega instinct as it helps bury him away from the pain in his leg. 

Keith very abruptly realizes that, Lance is good at this. If he can think past the pleasant hum now thrumming through his brain and body he realizes that it’s only been about five minutes of Lance petting him and already Keith feels nearly high enough on it to forget the pain in his leg. 

“Why are you good at this” he blurts out against the skin of Lance’s neck.

Lance laughs at him. “You say that like you expected me to be bad at it.”

“It’s just, it’s not like you spend a lot of time being an omega to the pack.” Keith says. There’s another second of silence between them and Keith thinks that he probably should have said that. 

“I don’t really think the pack needs an omega, do you?” Lance finally says before Keith can string together an apology. The purring in the back of his throat has stopped now and there’s now air of hesitancy in his scent. 

His words floor Keith, enough so that he pulls back to look at him, brows drawn tight together. Lance drops his hands away down to his sides to fiddle with the dirt and he won’t look up from the floor. It’s a surprisingly abashed expression to see on him. 

“Lance, why would you think that?”

“Keith, you snapped at me last week for touching your shoulder after you got out the healing pod.”

“I was still half asleep! I get disoriented!” Keith defends. 

“Okay, it’s just,” Lance waves his hand and sighs “At the garrison no one really ever wanted me to do this. Everyone thought it made them look weak so everyone just deals with their stress on their own there. I kind of realized after that first year that yeah, people are good at getting along without omegas” He shrugs a shoulder, “So I just kind of stopped. I didn’t want to make you guys think that I thought you needed it.” 

Keith gapes at him and Lance won’t look at him and it’s awkward for a long moment. Keith knows he should say something but he can’t possibly think of the right words right now to tell Lance exactly how important he is to their team. 

He doesn’t get the chance to think about it for long. The pain in his leg flares up again and Lance doesn’t hesitate to return to his ministration. Keith resigns himself that if they make it out of there, he’s going to show Lance he’s needed.

The team digs them out eventually. They’re both bruised, dehydrated and covered in dust but they’re alive. Once he gets out of the healing pod, the first thing he does is seek Lance out. He finds him in the common room couch with a data pad. Lance stares at him, bewildered, when Keith plops down next to him and curls up against his side. 

The rest of the team stares at them. Pidge drops their tablet. 

“You don’t have to…” Lance starts to say. 

“I know.” he hums, “I want to.” 

The two of them fall asleep together on the common room couch. It's the first step Keith takes in letting Lance indulge in his true omega caretaking instincts and the rest of the pack slowly start to follow the lead of their wayward second alpha, seeking Lance out on their own for things rather than waiting for him to always find them. Soon after Lance has his first heat in space and after that it seems like every one kind of just clicks into place. Their finally starting to function like a pack. 

Lance and Shiro come into their own, leading the pack. It’s rough at first, of course, because Shiro doesn’t know how to take Lance’s boisterous blunt and affectionate personality and Lance can’t seem to get past viewing Shiro as his idol.

But it all comes to head on mission on day when the five paladins walk into a hall cast alight in maroonish gray and huge looking for a new galran secret weapon and finding only one massive galran standing at the center of the room. He trembles violently, a cracked smile on his face breaking across his face and in his hand there’s a bomb. 

Pidge shouts but it’s too late.

Keith sails head over heels with the force of the explosion.

There’s a feeling of something too hot being near his face, like opening an oven and leaning into the heat. A pair of hands grip onto him and roll him away before it starts to hurts but Keith thinks that it did come really close.

Someone says something from above him, the voice sounds garbled in his head. The hand on him grip his shoulder tighter. Keith groans as his consciousness swirls. There’s a blurry image of a black shape crouched over him.

There comes sound of heavy footsteps, a broken gait and something dragging on the floor, and then the clattering of rubble. 

A low growl come from above him. “I will tear your throat out if you touch him.”

The hands on him are gripping harder. An icy chill runs through Keith’s bones. 

There’s a vicious snarl and then something wet and cooler than the heat of the air around then spray across on Keith’s face. Someone swears in loud, angry shout and the lighting above him changes. He feels like there’s no longer someone above him 

There comes a cacophony of vicious snarls and furious hissing and spitting. Then a crack, a short yelp and a heavy thud as something lands next to him. 

Then there’s something else, a roar that echoes across the room, striking even Keith to his core with feat. He thinks maybe it’s time to get up. 

It’s a slow process. 

Keith finally manages to come back to himself groaning as the pain in his head throbs. Someone is shaking his shoulder, hissing desperately “Keith, please, wake up!” 

Keith opens his eyes to the shape of Lance leaning over him. He’s watching something other the other side of Keith, poised and tense. The blue bayard is on the floor between them, smoking like Lance had just taken a few shots. There’s a loud snarl from across the room and Lance’s hand twitches towards it, right before there’s another, wetter noise and Lances attention drops back down to him and that’s when he notices he’s awake. 

“Lance?” Keith licks his lips and asks. The omega looks relieved when he sees him. 

“Can you…?”

“Huh?” Keith asks because he’s missed something. He blinks hard and tries- tries to concentrate. 

“Can you walk Keith?” Lance repeats again, fingers gripping his shoulder, “like do your legs fucking work, Keith?”

Oh. oh. The explosion. 

There’s soot in the back of his throat and it makes him cough but Keith manages to work himself up so that he’s sitting and it’s only with only a minimal amount of pain. Lance’s hands are fluttering around him as he does, like he’s ready for something to go horribly wrong. Nothing in his body immediately says please stop, but maybe that’s the adrenaline returning. Or his instinctual reaction to smelling an omega so nervous and frantic nearby.

Lance is covered in ash too. He’s cast in the orange glow of the dying residual fires around them and he’s bleeding from a cut over his brow and across his cheekbone. Keith looks down and notices, “Lance! You- your hand- Are you alright?” 

Lance retracts his hand to his lap. “It’s not mine” he answers, distracted again as he’s back to watching something over Keith’s shoulder. Keith turns his head to look too and it’s just in time to see Shiro dodge under an abortive strike from the massive galra that had attacked them and then lashing out with his galra hand to rip his throat out. 

Shiro doesn’t even grimace as he drops the mass of gore in his hand to the floor and flicks the blood off his arm. He whips back around and his eyes immediately fall onto Lance.

“Talk to me Lance, How are they?” Shiro asks, deactivating his hand and jogging back over to them.

“Keith says he can walk,” Lance answers looking back toward him. Keith nods, only a couple seconds delayed later. “You and Keith will have to get Hunk. I’ll get Pidge.”

Keith regains enough sense of himself to look for the small paladin and is surprised to see Pidge is on Lance’s other side lying against an upturned slab of flooring. Their heads thrown back and their jaws worked tight in what can only be pain.When Keith finally notices the completely wrong way their ankle is snapped into he understands why.

“...Keith. Keith!” 

Keith jerks, but dutifully moves his face back to Lance. He’s looking at him with an expression of both concern and anxiety and he thinks he hears “You’re so fucking concussed” before Lance clearly asks “Can you help carry Hunk?”

Keith nods. Both Shiro and Lance help him get to his feet.

Hunk’s sprawled out on the floor near where Keith’s head was with a massive head wound and a litter of shrapnel gashes all across his body. It looks like he’s taken the worst of it out of all of them. Keith’s surprised when he finds that he’s still partially conscious when he and Shiro get their arms underneath him and help lift him to his feet, it makes guiding him a lot easier.

Keith’s got one of Hunk’s arms slung over his shoulder and he turns back to Lance in time to see him helping Pidge climb onto his back. It would have made a bit more sense for Lance to help carry Hunk, leaving one arm free so he could shoot while giving Shiro Pidge so they could have one free fighter, but then Keith notices Lance’s busted arm that he keeps cradled to his chest. Lance tries to help Pidge as painlessly as possible secure herself before trying to stand. Keith guides him Hunk and Shiro the few paces between them so he and Shiro can help him the rest of the way up. Pidge’s brow is pulled tight and their eyes are screwed shut from what Keith can see over Lance’s shoulder. Wet tears cling to their lashes and cheeks and Keith can only feel pity, they look way too young. 

“Lance, you take point, we’ll bring up the rear,” Shiro instructs, and Lance nods, craning his neck in the direction of the door before taking off, picking the safest path through the collapsed rubble. They’re all moving down the hall as fast as they can, unsure of how much longer the ship will operate with the massive amount of damage to the control room. With Lance’s hyper homing instincts guiding them, they make it back to black lion in record time.

Lance has Keith help hold Hunk steady as he binds the worst of his wounds. Pidge is set up so they’re propped up against Keith, zoning in and out after he gives them some painkillers. They’re almost done with Hunk with Keith’s frame begins slipping, becoming heavier as he leans further and further over Hunk’s body without noticing.

“Uh-uh” Lance says when he looks up and notices, giving Keith’s shoulder a shove. “No going to sleep for you sir, not until we get a good scan on you.”

“But m’tired” Keith whines, sleepy and sad. Behind him he think he hears Shiro laugh quietly from the pilots seat.

“No can do, sir” Lance says sounding decisively unsympathetic as he wets a cotton swab with some weird altean mixture and dabs another one of Hunk’s gashes with it.

Keith looks down, still trying to blink sleep out of his eyes. “Your hands,” He suddenly blurts out when he sees Lance’s cracked nails and blood stained fingertips “What happened?” He sounds more panicked then he'd meant to but he can’t tear his eyes aware from the dark lines of blood underneath Lance’s fingernails and drying across the tips. 

Lance presses his lips in a thin line as he pressed an altean compressive bandage with one hand over Hunk’s wound. “He uh- He wanted to finish you guys.” Lance glances up at him, and then at Hunk and Pidge. “All of you” he finishes, swallow hard, nervousness caught in his expression. 

Keith can remember it more clearly now, Lance nearly feral with the furious need to protect his pack, all hell fire and brimstone in his voice and teeth, ready to take on the world if it meant his pack was going to get out of there safe. 

“Mmm, thank Lance” Pidge quietly slurs from next to him, not as asleep as they had thought they were, but still pretty far out of it. 

Lance’s looks back to Keith with his one hand resting on Hunk’s soot covered bicep. He grins.

“Well do all make a great team.”

Shiro and Lance have an argument about which one of them has to go into the pods first. Keith can only register half of it while he goes through the motions of putting on his pod suit, exhausting sitting heavy in his mind and bones. 

They both look like they need it. Lance’s arm is slowly turning black from the bruising on it and he keeps it cradled close to his chest.

Shiro has both dried and fresh blood still smeared across his face, but most of it probably doesn’t even belong to him. He’d also been limping earlier and his hand keeps hovering next to his ribs.

Ultimately, Shiro won out because while Lance argues like the sun he’s no match for Shiro’s level of determination. He makes a particularly put upon expression before he reluctantly goes to change into his own pod suit. 

There are times when Lance pushes to far. He’s an omega, a problem solver, driven by the need to resolve all issues that could be plaguing their pack. For big things that the paladins would rather swallow down and let eat them alive before they share, Lance is a miracle worker.

For smaller things that people just want to have and to mope and to maybe take a few days of break over- Lance isn’t always the best. He presses and he prods and he plies with the task of finding solutions to issues that aren’t always issues because sometimes people just want to be mopey and sometimes they just want to be petty. It’s not his fault, he just gets overzealous sometimes, a little too caught up in the pack. But when Pidge shoves him away with the demand for him to “Just STOP Lance” Keith can already feel like this time is different. 

Lance takes it like a champ in his defense. There’s a prickling wryness at the edge of his scent and he lets Keith coddle him over it but it’s done in an hour, replaced by a contemplating look that Lance turns on him once Keith pulls out of his hug.

Keith is then the designated person for the hearing of all petty problems. And it’s not in the “oh Lance threw a wet towel over all my clothes after training so I poured water in his entire dresser” level of pettiness, it’s more of a “I wish Allura would realize that we’re out here trying to save the world with not a lot of years under our belts and take it a little easier on us” - kind of petty problems. It’s for that shameful frustration, and misplaced anger. That’s what Keith’s good at hearing, irrationality, because after more than two decades of irrationality, Keith gets it. 

“Sometimes I think I just get scared because it feels like he’s trying to insert himself in a role my mother’s always been,” Pidge confesses to him quietly after a moments tinkering in between two different conversations about much larger problems. 

Keith hums in understanding. He doesn’t need to tell Pidge that no one could ever replace their mom because they know that. But that doesn’t change how they feel. 

So it’s a team like that, for a while it’s working. Shiro leads, Shiro directs, Shiro solves issues and gives fantastic advice. Lance placates, Lance heals, Lance makes sure they all stick together. And Keith, the other alpha, Keith cleans, the frayed edges of their pack, the loose nuts and bolts, Keith ushers them into Lances direction or Shiro’s or his depending on the matter at hand and together they’re a pack. 

It’s a team like that. 

And then Shiro disappears.

**Author's Note:**

> There's actually a full one-shot of that scene where they're trapped in a cave that I plan on posting later. Thanks for the read!


End file.
